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The Museum Gazette 



Badgevs are possibly half-hybernators. They certainly get 

 up in winter, and the tracks which they make in snow often 

 lead to their discovery and their destruction. Whether they 

 ever store food, and how long they sleep at a time, are ques- 

 tions on which our knowledge is at fault. 



Foxes neither sleep nor store. They thicken their under- 

 fur in autumn, and this done, they trustfully hope that all 

 the pheasants will not have been shot nor all the rabbits 

 snared. Unless the weather is very bad they will hardly take 

 to living in their holes, but will prefer to rest wide awake 

 under some thick gorse-bush ready for the joke of leading an 

 army of dogs, horses and men, a toilsome and bootless chase 

 across the roughest fields in the neighbourhood. 



The Weasel tribe, although proverbially wide awake when 

 awake, are sleepy animals, and no doubt spend all their time, 

 when not hunting, in bed. Summer is their time for frolic, 

 not winter, and their Christmas is probably, after the manner 

 of some Sectaries — kept rather as a fast than a feast. In 

 order, however, to reduce its hardships to a minimum, some 

 of them have adopted the habit of changing their coats and 

 dressing wholly in white during winter, so that when snow is 

 on the ground they may be the better able to steal furtively 

 on the unsuspecting bird or mouse or rabbit. It may be 

 doubted whether in England this habit is worth the trouble of 

 keeping up. It was doubtless acquired in climes or in ages 

 when snow was much more abundant and lasting, and is 

 maintained now as a memory of the past. It may possibly 

 within a coming milleniad be wholly laid aside, for it has its 

 disadvantages when it is not helpful. 



In the Hedgehog we have another good instance of the 

 hereditary survival of a habit. Probably in some colder age, 

 or climate, he learned the comfortable but idle habit of feast- 

 ing himself fat— very fat — in autumn, and then going to sleep 

 — soundly to sleep — for the whole of the winter. He will get 

 up in spring thin and hungry, in time for early worms and 

 eggs, young birds, and possibly infant mice. It cannot be 



